Avantes has launched a cylindrical lens for its miniature AvaSpec-128 spectrometer detector, which improves the sensitivity by a factor of four.
The increased sensitivity combined with the high speed of this detector array (full 128 pixel spectrum in 60 microseconds) enables many applications for inline process control. The new cylindrical lens focuses the light onto the detector array that has a pixel height of 63.5µm.
The AvaSpec-128 is available for the VIS/NIR (350-1,100nm) wavelength range and also shows a very good sensitivity in the 900-1,100nm range over the 2,048/3,648 pixels detector arrays commonly used in diode array spectrometers.
This increased NIR sensitivity is very useful for applications in fruit sorting and water detection, where most interesting absorption signals can be found in the 900-1,100nm range.
Many other applications can be found in colour measurement, where 128 pixels is enough data information to provide accurate colour parameters, such as L, a, b, hue, C, etc.